The Regional Media Group - which includes the daily Press Democrat and weekly North Bay Business Journal in Santa Rosa, and the weekly Petaluma Argus-Courier - posted $60 million in revenue in the third quarter, 11 percent of Times Co.'s overall sales. The unit's revenue has fallen 48 percent in the last five years.

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Advertising in the Regional Media Group has declined every year since 2006 as circulation declined and readers switched to online publications.

The division's third-quarter ad sales were $36.8 million, a 9.7 percent drop from a year ago, and circulation revenue was $18.3 million, down 1.5 percent.

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

Thoratec faces pressure to sell

Thoratec Corp., a maker of implantable heart pumps, should retain an investment bank to put the company up for sale, according to a shareholder proposal by investor Oracle Investment Management.

The proposal for the next shareholder meeting was disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday. Oracle controls 5.2 percent of Thoratec.

Larry Feinberg, Oracle's founder, this month urged Thoratec's board to hire a bank to handle an auction of the company. The heart-pump maker may attract bids from Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic Inc. or Abbott Laboratories if the company seeks a buyer, Feinberg said in an interview on Dec. 6.

"We believe that the market clout, capital resources and relevant experience of a larger and more tenured medtech company is required to accelerate the penetration of this burgeoning market opportunity," Oracle said in a supporting statement in the filing.

The market for Thoratec's main product, the left-ventricular assist device, is $5 billion to $10 billion, Oracle said. A company device in development may generate as much as $1 billion, Oracle said.

TECHNOLOGY

British firm sues Google over patents

Google was sued by British Telecommunications for allegedly infringing six U.S. patents for mobile-device technology.

BT, based in London, is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages against Google, according to a complaint filed Thursday in federal court in Delaware.

"BT has invested heavily over the last 20 years," generating "numerous patents," and Google's products including the Android operating system, maps, search, music and book services wrongly "incorporate BT's patented technologies," according to the complaint.

Last year, BT sued U.S. cable company Cox Communications in the same court over four patents for transmitting data over cable networks. A trial in that case is tentatively scheduled for 2014, according to court papers.

Juniper Networks takes rival to court

Juniper Networks accused Palo Alto Networks in a lawsuit of infringing six U.S. patents for firewall technology used to protect communications networks from intrusion.

Sunnyvale's Juniper is seeking a jury trial, unspecified damages and an order to stop misuse of its inventions, according to the complaint filed Monday in federal court in Delaware.

"As a leading high-performance networking company, we will take every appropriate measure to defend and protect our innovation," David Shane, a Juniper spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Palo Alto networks, in Santa Clara, "was founded by several former high-level employees of Juniper to compete against Juniper," lawyers for Juniper said in court papers. "We don't provide comment on these types of matters," said Mike Haro, a spokesman for Palo Alto Networks.